Do you ever wonder?
by Quillion Blade
Summary: Kaoru never ends up being an angel, and Shinji ends up a lil' attached to him. Then things get rough. An unexpected someone decides to get jealous. With her new feelings showing, this someone is determined to catch Shinji's heart...
1. Prolouge

**NOTE: This isn't a normal Evangelion fic, not in my eyes, anyway. (Then again,   
a man once said, "What is here is simply in the eyes of the beholder"). If you   
don't agree with the story line, you don't agree with the pairings, you don't   
agree with how I've altered things, and you just all around don't enjoy agreeing   
with anyone, then I suggest you go away and do something, um, unagreeable, people   
do. In other words, if you don't like Shinji being paired with Rei, you don't   
like a bit of yuri, and you don't like a bit of yaoi (I have nothing against it,   
personally. It's mild. Not graphic... in this story, anyway), then you shouldn   
't be here. END NOTE**   
  
  
**STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I don't own Evangelion. You don't own Evangelion, either.   
Gainax owns Evangelion. And you are not Gainax, or working for them. If you where,   
you would have better things to do... so don't bother trying to sue me. You have   
no lawyer anyway :p END DISCLAIMER**   
  
  
---   
  
  
Do you ever wonder?   
  
  
Prologue   
  
  
---   
  
  
~How can someone understand me? ~ I thought bitterly as I stared at the ceiling   
above my head, which had been so faithful to me through all my current escapades   
and had listened to all my problems I had never felt able to share with anyone   
else. Though it never did talk back, I still felt that in some way it comforted me.   
Someone once told me... someone I don't remember well... that no one should   
wallow in self-pity. If it's self-pity, then it means its too big of a problem to   
share with other people... and if that's so, then those people have other problems   
too. So don't go around expecting people to listen to your problems.   
  
They had said it was inconsiderate.   
  
So I never did.   
  
~How can someone possibly even being to understand me... the way he can. ~ My life had   
been pretty traumatic, though I guess others before me had it worse. I was not forced   
to live through the horrible experience of the second impact... and even if I had, I   
never would have remembered it. I would have been too young. Like Misato for example,   
the way Ritsuko had said she acted after the incident in Antarctica. Compared to what   
she had gone through, I probably had no idea what the word traumatic meant yet.   
  
  
Yet.   
  
  
There was my key word in everything that happened. A few years ago, nothing that happens   
today on a daily basis in my life would have seemed logically possible to me. A few   
years ago, if someone told me you could put a soul into a doll and name it Rei, that   
it would converse with your father and make him seem to think she was your mother, I   
probably would have looked at them strangely and walked away. If someone told me that   
today, I probably would shrug and go "You know Ayanami?" Nowadays if testing an experiment   
(which I also would have said was insane) involved someone going "Well, it hasn't happened   
yet." Any given one of us would answer "Yet."   
  
  
Anything seemed possible.   
  
  
*Everything* seemed possible.   
  
  
~ I thought no one was supposed to understand me. ~   
  
  
The fact that no one should be able to understand anyone else fully, stuck with me   
throughout the earlier part of my life. Up until I met Kaoru. That was when I discovered   
that the only thing I thought impossible was in fact, possible. The only little thing   
I had used to cap my boundaries and say the human mind could never go that far had   
been broken. My view of life that kept me alive and kept me from spilling out to someone   
else was shattered.   
  
  
~ How am I supposed to live this way? ~   
  
  
What when wrong and what caused me to explode the way I did at her... at any of them...   
I will never know. Whatever caused me to make the decisions I made the way I made them...   
those decisions where so horrible, that I am not sure I want to know what forced me   
to make them. All I know, and all I ever will know, is that the person who made those   
decisions was not the Shinji Ikari I am and is not the Shinji Ikari I ever thought I would   
end up being.   
  
  
~ Sometimes I just wish I had never met him. ~ 


	2. Chapter One

Do you ever wonder?   
  
Chapter One   
  
---   
  
Movement. I could see it out of the corner of my left eye. ~ No one should be down here. No one is   
allowed down here. ~ I turned my head slowly, curious as to what might be making the dark   
mysterious movements in the place my mind referred to as an Eva graveyard. ~ No one should be   
down here ~ I repeated the thought over and over in my mind, trying to convince myself that no one   
would discover me down here, longing for someone to talk to and speak to. I could always have gone   
to find Kaoru, he was worth talking to, but lately I had felt strange around him. So I tried to avoid him.   
  
As my head reached about as far around as it could go, I was greeted by the farmiliar darkness to on   
either side of me. I would never have been able to see anything lurking in the shadows directly beyond   
my face, seeing as the flourescent lights only cast a glow on the "bodies" down below, even if it *was*   
there. And since I had no desire to be found, I convinced myself silently that there was nothing there.   
I went back to looking out over the graveyard.   
  
I remembered the first time I had been down here, when I followed Misato and Ritsuko had drug me   
along. This was one of the few places I had been that was classified as "Top Secret" that actually   
captured my interest and convinced me it really did have a secret. ~ "This is where your mother   
dissapeared." ~ That could easily have been what caught my interest about the place. Ever since   
Kensuke and Toji had gone and the only person I could talk to had been Kaoru, I had been seeming   
to only get more and more lonely with each passing day. I often came here to seek something that   
might make me feel more... whole.   
  
"Shinji." A muffled voice spoke quietly and the strange way the monotone voice was so farmiliar   
startled me more than I had thought it could have. "What are you doing in this place? The sign on   
the door. It says you should not be here."   
  
I turned back towards my left where I had seen the movement before. Just as I had expected I was   
greeted with the site of Ayanami Rei. With her pale skin and lightly colored hair, she looked exceedingly   
like a ghost. Espically with the thin, white dress she wore while in intensive care clinging losely to her   
body. She looked like a ghost wrapped in a shroud. ~ A ghost in it's graveyard ~ "If you read the   
sign, then why did you come?" I asked in a whisper. I was afraid to speak loudly in that place. The   
only time I had before, my voice had echoed off the walls and resounded for what seemed like an   
eternity. It delivered a strangely unwelcome sense of reality to me.   
  
I could see a blush rise in Rei's face as she looked away from me. I had caught her off gaurd. "I wished   
to tell you that it is time for you to come upstairs." She muttered after a long, unsettling pause. "Misato   
asked me to find you. She is waiting up stairs..." Rei finished talking quickly and briskly began to walk   
away from me, towards the door the lead back to the main part of NERV HQ.   
  
"Rei, stop." I commanded. The words came out of my mouth without me thinking about them, or   
considering what such a command would sound like when amplified by the walls which would echo   
it back at me. I immeaditly shut my brain off so the sound never reached my ears, but whatever it   
had sounded like, it was enough to get Rei's attention and cause her to turn around and look at me   
with a very startled expression. I abruptly stuttered an apology.   
  
The real Rei, or more the one I had known before, probably would have immeaditly let the startled   
expression drop, and stalked off, but this one did not. Instead she looked down at the floor before her   
unsurely and it provided as a painful reminder that she did not remember anything. "What do you   
want of me?"   
  
I sighed, unable to recall the reason I had held her back. It had been lost within the depths of my mind   
when she had suprised me by turning around and looking startled. I looked away from her and back   
over the mammoth sets of bones set in orderly lines on the floor of the so called graveyard. "I hate   
this place." I whispered. "I have no idea why I come here."   
  
"Then do not come here." She responded. Her voice was back to it's normal flat, monotone self. She   
had sounded almost like a ... normal... person for a moment there. As much as I hate to say she's   
weird or diffrent, well, she is. "I do not understand humans. I do not think the second understood,   
either. Then maybe the doctor could have explained when I asked. I wish to know why they act like   
the do and why they do the things I find them doing. Why must humans be this way?"   
  
"Rei..." I muttered, feeling something just short of sympathy for her. "You *are* a human. You talk   
like..." I shook my head in disgust, unable to finish my scentence.   
  
"Like I am not one." She said abruptly. Then without another word, she turned and the only noise   
I heard from her aside from the door slamming behind her was the dry swishing of her skirt.   
  
---   
  
"She looks very upset." Kaoru stated flatly as he looked at the monitor display showing the insenstive   
care room in which Asuka lay. She wore a white dress identical to the one Rei had been put in. Her   
skin was almost equally pale from the lack of food she had eaten and dark bags hung ominously under   
what had once been radiant blue eyes. "Absolutely devistated. Crushed." Kaoru ran his finger across   
the screen and pulled it away to discover dust on the tip of it and scowled. "May I go talk to her?"   
  
Misato blew a bright pink bubble which popped loudly before responding. The way her gum smacked   
while she spoke was beginning to drive Kaoru nearly insane and he was about ready to do anything   
to get away from her. "Sure." She answered, waving a hand non chalantly. "She'll probably just lay   
there passivly staring at the ceiling, occaisonally muttering about being a failure and not being needed.   
I don't see why they brought her back. She won't do anything for us anymore."   
  
Ignoring the last statement, Kaoru nodded and made his way out of the brightly lit control room and   
into the welcomming darkness of the maze like hallways.   
  
---   
  
~ "You're worthless" ~   
  
~ "Unusable" ~   
  
~ "They'll just discard of you" ~   
  
~ "They don't need you anymore"~   
  
~ "The coward, wonder woman, the new boy...." ~   
  
~ "They'll do it all for you " ~   
  
"No." Asuka whispered bitterly. As she spoke not a muscle in her moved aside from the ones in her   
mouth and throat. Her body remained still, her eyes unblinking. "No, they won't replace me. They can't.   
They wouldn't do that. They need me. I have to have a purpose. Or else... or else... life just isn't   
living."   
  
"Then maybe you shouldn't be living at all." An unfarmiliar voice responded. Asuka's body remained   
unmoving, but the blank look on her face turned to suprise and shock. She was anything besides used   
to having her ramblings answered to by a voice that was not entirely within her head. "Everyone has   
a reason for being alive, no matter how short lived their life is." After those words she realized exaclty   
who the voice belonged to. Her replacement.   
  
"Get away from me." She whispered hoarsely, raising her voice just barely. "I don't want to talk to you.   
It's your fault I'm like this. It's your fault this happend." Her voice broke for a moment before becomming   
audible once more. "I don't want to see you. You can't exsist. You're not real. You're not. They need   
me still. You'll see. You'll all see."   
  
"Asuka, Asuka." Kaoru muttered sadly. "I came to see you because I was concerened. I've seen   
pictures of you that Shinji has in his room. You looked beautfil before, with your firey red hair and   
your sparkling blue eyes. I want to meet that girl you where before, Asuka. Do you know how ugly   
you look now? How much like Rei you look?"   
  
"Shinji." Asuka choked, the single word barely understandable with her raspy voice. "And Rei. Shinji...   
why... would he have... pictures. Pictures of me?"   
  
"He savored having you around, Asuka. He would do anything for a friend now. And what do you   
think of what I said before? Of resembling one of the people you hate most? Do you know how much   
you're like her now? Like Rei? So ... emotionless. Beautiless. Featureless."   
  
Asuka suddenly set up straight. The cords attached all over her body that monitored every little   
thing snapped off with popping sounds alot simular to that of Misato's annoying gum chewing. Her   
eyes widened and her skin paled more than it had before. With her sitting up like that, Kaoru could   
see just how little she had eaten when she had been gone the past week. Her bones showed clearly   
and even though it was one of the smaller sizes, her ward gown hung loosely on her. "No." She   
gasped. "No, I can't." Asuka swung her head around to meet Kaoru's steady stare. "I can't be like   
her, I can't." A tear rolled down Asuka's face as color began comming back into her face. "Help me,   
help me... you can't let this happen to me... not me ... "   
  
A smile, a rather disturbing one at that, spread over Kaoru's face. "That's why I've come down here.   
I want to get to know you, Asuka. You see, I have alot in common with that girl you call Rei. I know   
for sure that you don't want to end up like her. Trust me. I'm here to help you." The smile on his face   
seemed to fade, yet grow larger at the same time. "That's all I'm here for."   
  
---   
  
As I turned to walk away from the place I should not have been, a chill suddenly shot down my spine.   
I swalloed hard and looked behind me, then seeing nothing within the depths of the shadows, made my   
way back up to where Rei had said Misato was. 


End file.
